NAME

       gophfilt - oneshot connection to gopher document server

SYNOPSIS

       gophfilt [-t type] [-p path] [-h host] [-s port] [-i item]

DESCRIPTION

       The  gophfilt  program  is  a oneshot command line driven version of a gopher client, suitable for use in
       shell- or awk-scripts.

       The Internet Gopher is a distributed document delivery service.  It allows  a  neophyte  user  to  access
       various  types  of  data  residing  on  multiple  hosts  in  a seamless fashion.  This is accomplished by
       presenting the user a hierarchical arrangement of documents and by using a  client-server  communications
       model.  The Internet Gopher Server accepts simple queries, and responds by sending the client a document.

       Gophfilt  can operate in either of two modes.  The first one is in the spirit of unix filters, in that it
       accepts requests on stdin and writes results to stdout.  The request is in the form  of  a  tab-delimited
       .cache item.  For example:

          1Master Gopher at UMN    1/   gopher.tc.umn.edu   70

       (Or in string notation)

          "1Master Gopher at UMN\t1/\tgopher.tc.umn.edu\t70\n"

       This example would result in the retrieval of the root directory from the Master Gopher.

       Gophfilt's other mode permits the construction of a gopher request from arguments provided on the command
       line.  In this "manual" mode, at least the path and type items must be provided.  The  default  host  and
       port are taken from the file conf.h at module build time.

       -p  specifies  the  path  to  the requested data.  From our "filter" example above, the field "1/" is the
       path.

       -t specifies the type of the requested data.  From our example above, the leading "1"  character  is  the
       type (directory, in this case).

       -h  specifies  the name of the host where the server is to be found.  The default host (CLIENT1_HOST from
       file conf.h) is used if not provided.

       -s specifies the service (port) that the server is monitoring.  The default port (CLIENT1_PORT from  file
       conf.h) is used if not provided.

       -i specifies a search item.  This field immediately follows the path field in the transmitted request.

       -T  specifies  a  receiver timeout in seconds.  This is the maximum time that gophfilt will wait for more
       data.  If the "timeout" return value is noticed by the calling program, any data received to  that  point
       should be considered suspect.

       To recreate using manual operation the request from our example, one would execute the following command.

       gophfilt -t 1 -p 1/ -h gopher.tc.umn.edu -s 70

MORE EXAMPLES

       Here is an example that demonstrates the usefulness of the gophfilt.  This specific example only works on
       the Rutgers campus, but illustrates the point

       gophfilt -t 0 -p "webster default SPELL" -i flatulence
         -h hangout.rutgers.edu -s 770 | gophfilt

       This example requests a selector item from the Webster's Dictionary, and then pipes that item to gophfilt
       for subsequent retrieval of the actual definition.  The result is available on stdout for use.

RETURNS

       Gophfilt returns the following completion codes on exit:

           0 Successful completion.

          -1 Error in parsing command line arguments.

          -2 Manual operation and insufficient parameters were provided.

          -3 Piped operation and unable to read selector from stdin.

          -4 Unsupported item type requested.

          -5 Unable to connect to specified host and port combination.

          -6 Error encountered writing to stdout.

          -7 Timeout occurred while waiting for more data.

                                                                                                     GOPHFILT(1)